Do planned cities work?

Planned communities are cities built from zero using master plans that take into account every aspect of the life of their future citizens.

A viral example of a planned city is Saudi Arabia's 'Line' in the desert. The futuristic city has been very criticized by urban design experts and praised by fans online.

Still, the idea of a planned city is not new, and there are plenty of examples from the past century to answer if it is ideal to conceptualize a community from scratch.

Brasilia is one of those. Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and urban planner Luis Costa conceptualized the city as the new capital to bring economic development to the country's center by government order.

They created the city for about 500,000 people but now hold over 2.5 million. But it was also designed inorganically and has become inaccessible for most of the workers in the city.

It also has a few problems for more contemporary lifestyles: it was designed having cars in mind. Commuters have difficulty walking when they are in the city's downtown area.

Image: Ramon Bucard / Unsplash

But only some planned cities lack sound public transportation. Singapore, for example, has a system that, according to The Guardian, has encouraged 65% of commuters to use public transport rather than cars.

Urban planning, tightly controlled by the government and the ruling party, has been vital to the city-state's ramping economic growth. However, it has also come at the expense of many civil liberties and laws that sometimes seem draconian.

In Asia, the post image of planned communities is Abuja, the administrative capital of Nigeria. The government approved the master plan for the city in 1979 with a similar idea to Brasilia.

Abuja's master plan predicted controlled city growth. However, according to NASA's Earth Observatory, many unplanned development serving low-income Nigerians began to spring up outside the planned neighborhoods.

Chandigarh, in India, was planned as a futuristic Western-inspired mid-century city. According to the BBC, it is one of the few successful examples of planned cities.

Taking actual citizens' needs instead of those of the ideal population urban designers wish their cities to have, is the key. Chandigarh is one of India's most prosperous and green cities.